Does God Exist? E-Book

Philip Gardiner

• Herausgeber: One Media iP Group
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 209

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Does God Exist? This question has been asked by literally millions of human beings over thousands of years and are we any closer to the truth? Science now has a part to play. If there is a God then our scientists ought to be able to prove it, surely? We now live in an age where quantum physics and artificial intelligence are in the news along with the latest gossip on the royal family and Hollywood celebs. We deify almost anything these days. But in times past we created stories about gods from the skies riding chariots and angels with wings. So sit back and prepare for a mind-bending trip into the world of what we call, God.

Leseprobe

Does God Exist?

Philip Gardiner

Introduction

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” Francis Bacon, 1561-1626.

If you have bought this book then you are asking questions. These same questions have been asked for thousands of years - by the first Shaman and Medicine men of primitive cultures to the high philosophers of the Hellenised world. With each passing generation we are no closer to the truth of whether god exists.

What does change is our perception of what this god is or should be. In the beginning we may have held the gods or god to be Animistic, Totemic or even plain agricultural deities. Attributing all manner of special and wonderful meanings to their persona. In many instances astrological or astronomical ideologies were placed over these early beliefs. This gave real life to the flames, light and heat of the sun, resurrecting nightly the cold light of the moon. Our systems developed and evolved as we learned more and more about the world around us. Eventually we became more rational and literal. At a unique period of time the gods were themselves rationalised into just one all encompassing god, which just happened to be male. Of course this was after the destruction of the idea of the balancing goddess, Sophia. She has been hidden within the Gnostic surviving traditions as Mary, Isis and various other female deities. For the literalists this female counterpart or Lilith, was simply in the way and we were left with one, male god. This god, because he was the accumulation of all the ideas and symbols of the other deities also held all the answers to all our questions. A super god.

This one super god could have emerged from anywhere at any time, had that time been right. But the time was right in the Middle East. There was a vacuum and an Empire sufficiently placed to help this new way grow. Eventually this new faith manifested itself around the globe as Christianity. After this eruption of new ideology and with the world rapidly becoming a smaller place it became increasingly less likely that any other monotheistic religion would ever be quite as successful. Any successor would have to wage war with the might of Christianity. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to keep the focus of this book more towards Christianity rather than say, Islam or Buddhism.

There has, however, been a war raged, as we all know. Not just a physical battle of the strongest but also a more subtle psychological battle of propaganda. This makes sifting through the evidence more difficult than it would otherwise be, due to the layers of lies and deceit always present when propaganda is utilised.

With this in mind and using history as a tool we can only forecast a balancing out of beliefs and a coming together of world religions. The opposite is almost too bloody to bear. Hopefully a rationalism of this long-term propaganda will fuse the minds of these otherwise intelligent people.

For now we have to use the evidence at hand to decide for ourselves what the truth is. We can take no relevance or help from how intelligent a believer or non-believer may be. There are many millions of highly intellectual people who hold to the faith of either god or atheism. We cannot say that just because a Professor believes in god then we should also. There are a many great reasons for the emotional state of belief. And that is exactly one of them. Belief and faith are emotional states, not intellectual property. Something inside of us is said to demand an answer. Something, possibly part of an evolutionary instinct, emits a strong desire for there to be more to life than that which we have. Many believe this to be part of the cyclic problem, that we have a beginning and an end, and we cannot deal with this. As if to circumnavigate the problem we give our gods the ability to resurrect, just as do the sun and moon and stars daily and nightly. We then claim this as a gift from our god, that we may also be miraculously resurrected.

The sheer terror of there actually being an end to life is often too much for us to bear and religion has the answer. Now, in this modern age, we also cling to other more peculiar belief systems such as Alien worship and seeing the Universe as a living organism. These become easier to believe due to the perceived rationalism behind them. In time these ideologies will alter into something else we cannot even imagine.

In all things we need balance, careful consideration and an analytical mind to help us see beyond the emotional states of not just ourselves but others also.

So just what is the purpose of religion?

Is it god’s answer to the questions man cannot answer? Or is it simply man’s answer to those same questions?

In this book we are looking for the answer to two questions. What or Who is god? And what are we to understand represents proof?

Firstly then to god. What is the Christian point of view?

God is our concept of the Supreme Being. The creator, lord and manager of our lives. He made everything. He is omnipotent, all seeing and all knowing, the beginning and the end. We cannot hide from god. He is to be worshipped for all he has done for us. He is to be petitioned in prayer and we are to place faith in him for all our needs. He is our saviour, taking away all our sins so that we can reconcile ourselves again with him.

We cannot, yet, explain god in scientific terms. Whoever does will make a lot of money. There are moments of quantum understanding that one day may bring us close, but however close we do get, it will still be a million miles off the mark.

Humans are finite beings; we are still, after all this time trying to understand what must be an infinite being, if indeed he exists.

We, as finite beings, look for a beginning and an end. The Bible even tells us that god is the Alpha and Omega (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet). Life must start somewhere and end somewhere; we simply cannot understand it any other way.

Yet, if we were gods, we would possibly exist in some 4th dimensional state that mere humans simply could not comprehend. We would know everything, in all time, all at once, present, past and future. We would hold the power to create life and take it away again. To choose life or death for billions is the kind of power only mad men dream of.

That is why we would also be love. According to the Bible, god Is love. This would be just as well. The power to create and destroy life needs the taming of love.

Hopefully now we have a better understanding of what many Christians believe to be god.

So what about proof?

Proof is evidence that something is true. But how do we know what is true? It can be two ways. For instance I am a white man, and yet I am also a sort of pink colour. Which is true. Both are obviously true. One is true symbolically and one true literally. These are the truths we have to sift through when reading the Bible or any other ancient tradition or myth.

I cannot prove to you that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, it is something we have faith in. There is evidence that Marlowe also had a hand in many of Shakespeare’s works. What is true? There has been many thousands of researchers look into this mystery and still no hard evidence has emerged. How much more important then is it that we discover the author or authors of the Bible? Was it man or god?

Philip Gardiner

England 2002

Prophetic or pathetic

Prophecy can be a very powerful way of showing that the Bible / Koran is the word of god. Many theologians argue that some Bible prophecies were written after the event however, and point to prophetic self-fulfilment.

For Christians prophecy ensures the strengthening of faith as Peter wrote, “..and we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ” 2 Peter 1: 19. When we begin to take a deeper look into Biblical prophecy we find ourselves startled at the immense scope and the intricately detailed DNA-like structure that it weaves through the centuries. Surely if there is a god, and that is the question of this book, and if that god is the Biblical god, we must believe that he gave us his word through prophets, men of his word. However, to be totally fair we must look at other, non-Biblical fortune telling, for in doing so we should be able to discern the differences between the prophecies of god and the childlike grasping of man. This in itself can be used as strong ‘evidence’ for the existence of god, albeit circumstantial. The very range of subject matter is both bewildering and ridiculous. Of the following you will surely have heard of a few: - Divination, clairvoyance, augury, astrology, horoscopy, palmistry, crystal gazing, dowsing, and tarot card reading.

Prophet or Profiteer?

From Biblical days monarchs have seen fit to employ so-called prophets and seers. Even in our contemporary age the illustrious leaders of western and some eastern countries employ people to read their horoscopes or palms and tell them whether to have a hair cut or press the big button. Many stars and personalities join in with “New Age” fortune telling and end up making stars and personalities out of the fortune-tellers, who then, make huge amounts of money. Each week in many countries we now have Astrology television programmes, telling us our fortunes and listening to the wonderful coincidences week in and week out.

Back in the sixteenth century much the same thing was happening with the rulers of England. The prophet of the day was a man named John Dee (1527-1608) who, although failing to predict the death of King Edward VI correctly, was employed for a time by Queen Mary, in order that she may “have her and her husbands horoscopes read.”

Dee fell in with a man named Edward Kelly who claimed to see spirits in crystals and held long conversations with dead people. Things did not turn out well for Dee when a spirit called Madimi told Kelly that Dee should share his wife with him.

Dee, a spy of the realm and also known as 007, was taken in by a trickster. Kelly can be shown to have deceived Dee. Together they managed to manipulate dozens of Royalty including the Polish King and Holy Roman Emperor. It was the clever workings of a government spy and a superb con man in the guise of Kelly that managed to be the talk of Europe. Eventually Dee lost his home in England and became almost secondary to the legend of his previous underling Kelly. In the end there is no proof that any of the Dee/Kelly scenario is true prophecy from spirits or god. It is in actual fact a sad story of deceit.

In the fifteenth century a woman by the name of Janet Ursula Southiel, now commonly known as Mother Shipton, supposedly predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666AD and the English Civil War.

Even at birth rumours of “the Devils child” and “Lucifer’s daughter” were abound and her mother was accused of copulating with the Devil. Her mother vanished to a convent and a nurse took Ursula in as her own. Ursula went on to marry Tobias Shipton and moved from Knaresborough to Skipton.

However, any keen historian upon closer inspection will find that the prophecies are so obscure that they could mean anything from making telephone poles to the invention of satellite dishes. With the advance in science and technology, interpretations of Mother Shipton’s prophecies are updated still by her ardent followers to fit with the times in which we live. Take for example the following rhyme which, has since been “attributed” to Mother Shipton, and therefore ‘becomes’ hers: -

Carriages without horses shall go,

And accidents fill the world with woe,

Around the earth thoughts shall fly,

In the twinkling of an eye;

The world upside down shall be,

And gold found at the root of a tree,

Through the hills man shall ride,

And no horse shall be at his side,

Under water men shall walk,

Shall ride, shall sleep, shall even talk,

In the air men shall be seen,

In white, in black, in green,

Iron in the water shall float,

As easily as a wooden boat,

To an end the world shall come,

In the year two thousand and sixty one.

Sounds wonderfully authentic doesn’t it? She must have been in touch with god himself. No, afraid not. This magnificent rhyme of doom was created centuries after her time and attributed to her. Were you wondering over the words? Were you imagining the telephone as being the thoughts flying around the earth? This is how we are sucked into believing. A little at a time, with words placed into the mouths of prophets. Now after all this time it is hard for the onlooker to discern between fact and fiction. Did she really predict the Great Fire of London? Highly unlikely.

The same is true of Michel de Nostradame or Nostradamus, who has lately taken an upsurge in popularity. He is from the same period as Mother Shipton and again much of his work is attributed to him and may not even be his, let alone from his period. Also his words are most often so obscure as to be able to be interpreted in any way at all. He supposedly predicted the death of the French King Henry II, but again it is concealed in such cryptic language that it only serves to give it a taste of the mythological and surreal. This is basically why the work of Nostradamus can be re-released every century because it will always find a subject matter with which the vagaries of his language can adapt.

From profit and fame, attention-seeking individuals, sincere mystics, and just plain fools, we turn now to a totally different aspect of prophecy. Richard Brothers (1757-1824) surprisingly anticipated the death of King Louis XVI. He then went on to claim that he was a direct descendant of King David and the nephew of the almighty. Needless to say, whatever spirits Richard Brothers had been listening to were probably out of a bottle. Eventually he was committed to an asylum and declared insane.

We may laugh and mock the people of ages past, but are we any better? In fact we seem to be worse. At least our ancestors had the excuse of low technology and lack of information. What is our excuse?

Are there simply too many problems with prophecy to use it as proof? There are no live witnesses, no scientific analysis and simply too many other reasons for people to create the myth. Whoever uses prophecy as a proof for the existence of some higher being is simply perpetuating that myth. And yet Christianity maintains this element as part of its weaponry for conversion. How does this weaponry hit the target? Why are we still affected by prophecy? Indeed, why do we seek predictions?

Horror-scopes!

Today 91% of people read their star signs which only leaves 9% that do not. This of course means that people of all faiths are also doing so. Of this 91% who do read them, 70% read stars for fun and 20% really believe them. Eight million people read their horoscopes daily in newspapers. This is just a hint at how big this business is.

Historically it all began some three thousand years ago (and highly likely more - see The Shining Ones by same author), with Babylonian priests. They watched the night sky and noted the seven wanderers that turned out to be the planets (less the obvious ones that were discovered later). They then divided this heavenly map into first thirteen segments then twelve, and used it as a kind of calendar.

A few people were chosen and their birth days logged, then they were closely watched and their traits of anger, loyalty, patience and so on were carefully written down. This is where the equations used today originated.

Even if those big rocks out there in space could somehow guide our life and help us make decisions we would be making the wrong decisions now. The star signs are exactly one month out from when they were firsts created. So whatever star sign you think you are, you’re not.

People still joyously go ahead even today and lay out the Tarot cards and truly trust in the upturned pictures of chance. They will watch the mass of twinkling stars in the “heavens” and put money down on their now ever so sure futures. With upturned palms people are preyed upon by professional fair ground Machiavellian storytellers. And yet it is easier for the sake of our conscience to not believe in god, to go on enjoying ourselves in iniquity, but deep down we seem to have a need to be sure of the future, of why we are here.

Take a look outside your window. There may be trees and plants or maybe you live in a city and all you see are buildings and concrete. Wherever you live, you will notice one thing. There is, even at our level, a massive amount of order. The trees have branches and leaves, all with wonderful symmetry. In the concrete landscape we see man’s interpretation of our own in-built order. The precise number of windows, the angles, the colours, all balanced.

This wonderful order follows through, in everything, from the grass we walk on, to the stars in the sky. The much credited chaos theory has little to do with the order we are talking about here. In fact the chaos theory merely backs up the balance of life and its almost thermodynamic order. There is even a mathematical underlying symmetry to chaos theory which has recently been proven by scientists. Chaos really is unrecognisable order.

So what is the meaning of all this order? Why is the universe so ordered? Why do we have symmetrical bodies, hands, feet, arms etc? This question cannot be answered without putting a meaning into existence - the all-important question, what is the meaning of life? This eventually leads us to a belief that order has been created, that order came from chaos.

This question has tormented mankind ever since we could walk and talk. Yet, even now, in this scientific age we still have the questions unanswered. Is it in fact unanswerable? Is there simply no meaning to life? And why do we have such a hard time believing that? Are we simply just walking bags of chemicals and water that have come together just perfectly over millions of years? Or is there some great universal law and plan behind all of this? After all, we seem to be comfortable with anything when we can tie it down with a law or two. Every generation seems to come up with new laws and theories and so our reality alters from what it was to what it is. When the Romans invaded Britain we were worshipping pagan Sun Gods and Moon Gods amongst a pantheon of deities. Now WE have a different reality, changed vastly over a long period of time. Gradually we have taken the answers away from deities and found them in science and rationalism.

And yet, science still cannot provide the answers to the very fundamental questions at the root of all life. Why are we here? What is it all about? Who or what started it all and why? And so again we keep coming full circle, asking the same questions without answers.

Will we find a balance some day? A balance between spirituality and science? There does seem to be something very special about being human. Our knowledge that we are alive. We must ask, is there a reason for this? Will we find, as some Christians say, that the spiritual element of our life cannot be explained scientifically. They explain their experience as if god was broadcasting a radio signal and they had to tune into him. Sometimes, they say, the signal is confusing and all they get is static. But other times they get a clear signal and really understand god. Maybe mankind has forgotten how to tune himself in. Maybe god is still broadcasting to a reducing audience?

Many people do say that their minds were more aware and in a higher state of consciousness when they became Christian. Is this because they finally tuned in their signal? Or is it a chemical and psychological reaction to the religious experience? Finding a natural state of bliss?

Two thousand years ago in the arid desert of the Middle East, Hebrew priests and prophets wandered around issuing forth proclamations of truth from god. Radio messages of the future. Their reality was very different to ours today. There were far fewer other signals around blocking those of god, if indeed there were any. Maybe Bible prophecy is the evidence for that signal having been picked up all those years ago? And then again, maybe it is just as flawed as the other prophets of the globe.

Bible Prophesy

“For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.”, Luke 21:15.

Let us look at the prophet Isaiah, who, writing in around 700 BC, apparently accurately predicted the following: -

“Who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please”; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt” and of the Temple, “Let its foundations be laid””, Isaiah 44:28

When Isaiah supposedly wrote this, there was no such King as Cyrus, Jerusalem was fully built and the Temple was standing. However, 100 years after writing these fateful words the city and Temple were destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. After this it was taken by the Persians in 539 BC and their King, named Cyrus, gave a decree to rebuild, as in Ezra 1:2, “This is what Cyrus King of Persia says: “The Lord, the god of heaven has given me all the Kingdom of the earth and has appointed me to build a Temple for him in Jerusalem in Judah.”” (See also Chronicles 36:22)

So Isaiah apparently prophesied a whole 160 years before the event with a name, a place and what would happen. That is of course if we believe Isaiah.

Herodotus the fifth century Greek historian records that the Euphrates was diverted from running through the centre of Babylon by Cyrus in order to allow his Persian army to enter under the walls by means of the riverbed. This proves that there was such a person as Cyrus, at the correct time, took the Babylonian Empire and incorporated Jerusalem.

Of course there are numerous accounts of the exploits of King Cyrus, even his own words say, “I also gathered all the former inhabitants and returned them to their habitations.” He was of course speaking of the return of the people of Judah from Babylon, itself a fulfilment of other Bible prophecies.

Now what about Nebuchadnezzar? In Jeremiah 15:8 we read, “I have brought upon them against the mother of the young men a spoiler at noonday: I have caused them to fall upon it suddenly, and terrors upon the city.” Which if we were to take the word “mother” to mean Jerusalem or metropolis of the land, the passage might then read, “I have brought against the Mother City a spoiler at noonday”. However in chapter 21:7 he speaks in straight language leaving no doubt, “After that, declares the Lord, I will hand over Zedekiah King of Judah, his officials and the people in the city who survive the plague, sword and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives.”

Now all this is very interesting, especially when we consider that Jeremiah was supposedly writing this at least thirty-four years before the actual event. Daniel confirms the truth of the event in Daniel 1:1, “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim King of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.”

In the book of the minor prophet Nahum we find the foretelling of the downfall of Nineveh. Lo and behold we now find in the chronicles of the Babylonian King Nabopolassar that indeed the combined forces of the Chaldeans and Medeans did actually destroy Nineveh in 612 BC. In fact it was so devastated that Xenophon did not even recognise it as the site of a city when he passed in 401 BC.